


Hallways

by CasualGravity



Series: AkuSai Month 2019 [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Akusai Month 2019, M/M, Slowburn Prompts, post-kh3, very minor angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 11:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20470283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasualGravity/pseuds/CasualGravity
Summary: Isa and Lea return to the castle in Radiant Garden.





	Hallways

**Author's Note:**

> Day 3
> 
> **Lost and Found**

It quickly became clear that the upper floors of Radiant Garden’s castle were in need of much more than a thorough dusting. Very few of the lovely stained glass windows had managed to hold onto that glass through the world’s fall or Maleficent’s occupation and subsequent removal allowing for sunlight to fill water-damaged halls. At various points, Isa and Lea had to press closer together to navigate passed points where the ceiling had come down. 

The quiet between them was amiable and unhurried, but it wasn’t what Isa had been expecting when he’d asked Lea to come along with him; the castle wasn’t exactly home to their most positive memories, after all. Lea remained uncharacteristically quiet though, seemingly content to keep Isa company no matter what sort of whim had brought them there; which was equal parts great and also not great. Having all the mental rehearsing he’d done that morning be for nothing had left him feeling a little wrong-footed and the longer the silence between them stretched the harder it was to find a way to break it. 

Thankfully, Isa was saved from having to do something drastic like will his boyfriend into becoming a mindreader when Lea walked face first into a cobweb.

“_KINGDOM HEARTS!_” Lea swore, shattering the silence. He began flailing aggressively in an attempt to rid himself of the web (as well as any occupants it might’ve still contained). In his panic he stumbled over the remains of a light fixture and would’ve ended up in a heap on the floor had Isa not grabbed him by the shirt. With Lea no longer in danger of falling, Isa helped him remove the cobwebs from his hair. “Okay, I’m gonna bite—why are we here?”

“Ienzo asked me to,” Isa answered as he’d rehearsed. He pulled one last shred of old spider silk from Lea’s hair and experienced a brief surge of panic when the web clung to his fingers. “Everyone is busy moving the Restoration Committee’s equipment into the castle and they wanted to take stock of how much work the upper floors will require.”

“The real reason, though.”

Right to the point.

“I feel like I can finally find a bit of closure here,” Isa admitted. He’d toiled all morning trying to find the wording to convey how he’d been feeling about the excursion, but nothing had felt adequate. Calling it ‘closure’ was the closest he could get. They continued walking, their pace as it had been before, though Lea seemed more conscious of any potential hazards in his immediate vicinity. “I’ve only really been in the lab since my recompletion. What about you?”

Isa watched out of the corner of his eye as Lea’s expression grew troubled; it was gone before he could look directly at him.

“Same. Mostly,” He shrugged. His posture was noncommittal, but Isa knew better. “Everyone poked around a bit when we all woke up, but we were more worried about looking for you and Braig than we were about counting holes in the ceiling.”

They came to a stop at the mouth of a hall that was all too familiar even after a decade and hesitated. 

“Are _you_ okay with being here?” He hadn’t really thought to ask; he’d expected Lea to speak up long before they reached this point if being in the castle was making him uncomfortable. “I can come back another time. We’ve already seen enough to tell Ienzo what he needs to know.”

Lea shrugged again.

“That just means you’d have to put it off or come back by yourself,” He started walking down the hall with renewed purpose, Isa following close behind. “Besides, I doubt I’d make the same trip for myself so now’s as good a time as any.”

“Thank you.” Isa said, taking Lea’s hand and squeezing it briefly before letting go again.

When they’d first been brought into the fold, Isa had thought that the location of their rooms—tucked away on a lower floor and away from the other apprentices—had been an advantage given their reason for being there. Looking back though, Isa couldn’t ignore how it had set a precedent later. He and Lea never grew close to Ansem’s other apprentices, so there’d been no camaraderie amongst them without their hearts. By the time the neophytes began to join the ranks, they’d been too senior to find friends there either.

Those ten years grew lonelier every time Isa looked back at them.

“Yours or mine first?” Lea asked. Their old rooms faced each other on opposite sides of the hall. Both doors were shut tight and identical. Isa considered each with a frown. 

“Mine, I guess?” 

“Alright then,” Lea smiled. He turned to Isa’s old door and tried to open it. The knob turned easily; the door didn’t budge. Lea tried again. “Should’ve expected that.”

“It must be jammed. Let me try,” He pushed Lea gently aside so that he could make his own attempt and quickly met with similar results. The door gave an inch, briefly, followed by the sound of something scraping across the floor in protest on the other side before whatever was on the other side won out. The door whipped back into place. “I think something’s blocking it.

“Should we try and force it open then?” Lea was already moving back over to help as he said it, green eyes scanning the doorframe as if it could give him some kind of answer to their dilemma. 

“I don’t know. There wasn’t anything by the door that could’ve fallen—that I remember,” Despite himself, he ended up giving his old bedroom door the same examining look that Lea was. “Judging by the state of everything else, it’s something to do with the castle. We could bring the ceiling down on us if we’re not careful.”

“Well, if a ceiling falls on me it won’t be the worst way I’ve gone out.”

The last word had barely left Lea’s mouth before Isa was whipping around to fix him with a glare so vicious even Demyx hadn’t been on the receiving end of it. He couldn’t decide if he was appalled by how cavalier Lea was about it or frightened by the prospect.

“Too morbid, I agree.” Lea said, putting his hands up placatingly. Isa glared at him a moment longer and then turned back to the obstacle in front of them.

“Step back.” He muttered. Lea, already looking chastised, did. Isa twisted the doorknob with more force than might’ve been necessary, braced his feet shoulder-width apart and slammed his full weight into the door. It was far from his best idea and it did occur to him, but only after whatever had been keeping the door shut shrieked one final protest and gave. The door whipped open to reveal a pile of detritus on the floor and a bedroom that Isa hadn’t expected to see again.

Isa released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and rubbed at the shoulder he’d used to force the door open. He turned back to Lea, words dying on his tongue as he took in the wide-eyed look on his face.

“Wow…” Lea whispered, a blush starting to rise over his cheekbones. 

“Lea.”

“Yea, sorry,” He’d never sounded less sorry to Isa as he walked through the newly opened door. “I’m a _huge_ fan of that, by the way.”

“Good to know.” Isa said flatly. 

The ceiling had, in fact, given way at some point in the last several years; that was obvious immediately. The floor was covered in splintered wood and half-rotted drywall. The window above the bed had been destroyed like the ones out in the hall. Broken glass littered the bed and the night table, glinting in the sunlight that filled the room, unimpeded. Two wooden beams seemed to be the source of most of the damage, one having fallen against the door and the other, from what Isa could tell, had crushed the wardrobe to the left of it.

The smell of mildew hung in the air.

“It definitely isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be,” Lea had already stepped over the worst of the mess and towards the window. Isa expected him to start digging through drawers or pacing around the room, but instead he pulled back the comforter on the bed—clearing the glass away with it—and sat down in a patch of sun. “Do you know what you’re looking for?”

“Not really,” Isa said. Glass crunched underfoot as he picked his way through the mess. There really wasn’t much to it. Besides the bed, night table and wardrobe, there was a desk wedged into the corner to the right of the door and a bookshelf that didn’t hold much more than a few notebooks he’d kept to manage his work as an apprentice. The desk was much the same. It hadn’t felt safe to keep things around. “I don’t even know if I’m looking for anything in particular.”

“Just wanted to see it then?” Lea asked as he watched Isa fiddle with some of the old pens that had been left on the desk. Isa shrugged. He wasn’t sure if that was it either.

“Maybe.”

“Well… Take your time. You’ll figure out what you need.”

The room fell quiet for a while after that, save for the distant chatter and birdsong from the town below that filtered through the broken window. Isa inspected the notebooks on the shelf with disinterest that grew with the turning of each discolored page. His notes had been meticulous even back then and his disdain for the work being done in the castle apparent in them. It dredged up old horror in him; his heart aching deep in his chest. 

It wasn’t what he was looking for.

Isa finished the last of the notebooks and tossed it carelessly onto the desk before drifting over to the other side of the room. A glance over at the bed showed that Lea had begun to fiddle with his gummiphone at some point in an obvious but appreciated attempt to give Isa a small bit of privacy while he tried and failed to scratch whatever itch had fueled their excursion. That just made Isa more frustrated. 

As he was about to call it quits though, something caught his eye. 

The wardrobe was half-crushed but still mostly standing, its contents exposed to the elements. Hanging there amongst several garments he’d owned purely out of obligation a familiar blue jacket. Isa pulled it off its hook, smoothing his fingers over the fabric. 

The color had faded with time and the seams didn’t feel quite right anymore, but it was as he remembered it. Tracing his fingers over the moon on the breast, he thought about the day he’d become an apprentice. He’d taken his blue coat off and exchanged it for a lab coat and he’d never worn it again.  
Not long after, that lab coat had been replaced by a black one. 

“Never thought I’d see that old thing again.” 

Isa glanced at Lea as he rose from the bed and slipped his gummiphone back into his pocket before returning his attention to the jacket.

“Neither did I.” Isa said wonderingly. Lea hooked his chin on Isa’s shoulder and quietly watched him clutch at the fabric like there was some kind of comfort to wring from it. 

“Is this what you needed?” 

Isa was quiet for a moment, his grip tightening a fraction. He did feel better. Not completely, but the risk of him flying apart at the seams had gone down significantly. 

“Yes,” He said. Carefully, he folded the jacket and put it under his arm. “It is.”

**Author's Note:**

> I flipped a coin to see whose room they'd go to because I had ideas for both Lea's scarf and Isa's coat. Isa ended up winning.
> 
> This prompt moreso than any of the others gave me a lot of trouble and I feel like it's pretty obvious. Just need to do edits on the other fills and then I'll be posting them over the next couple of days.


End file.
